Household appliances are utilized generally for a variety of tasks by a variety of users. For example, a household may include such appliances as laundry appliances, e.g., a washer and/or dryer, kitchen appliances, e.g., a refrigerator, a microwave, and/or a coffee maker, along with room air conditioners and other various appliances.
Some household appliances can also include features for connecting to and communicating over a secure wireless network. Such communication may provide connected features on the household appliances, e.g., where the household appliance communicates with a personal device, smart home systems, and/or a remote database such as a cloud server.
Typically, such household appliances require multiple processes using multiple user interfaces in order to establish a connection, in particular an initial connection, between the household appliance and a secured WI-FI network.
For example, in some previous attempts to provide a network-enabled household appliance, the appliance has been provided with a WI-FI access point of its own, and in order to commission the appliance on a home WI-FI network, a user would have to connect to the appliance's WI-FI access point separately, e.g., via a separate settings app on a smartphone or tablet, in order to establish an initial connection. Once the initial connection was established, the credentials for the home WI-FI network could be entered into the smartphone and sent to the appliance using another app different from the settings app.
The necessity of interacting with multiple user interfaces, e.g., on different apps, makes commissioning the household appliance on the secured WI-FI network more time consuming and less convenient for some users. As a result, the rate of adoption of connected features on such household appliances may be reduced.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an appliance which can be connected to a secured wireless network in an easier and more convenient manner, such as requiring only a single user interface.